Most of the job is now done on specialized processors. Get used to it. The general purpose CPUs are going to matter less and less. They are slow for hard tasks and will be giving way to special gear like video and graphics processors. Reply

Plus the iPhone3GS officially supports not only 480p but (720x)576p anamorphic (PAL DVD resolution) with high bitrates (if you go too high you just have to manually restrict your encoder to h.264 level 3.0 or iTunes won't transfer the file). Unofficially the iPhone 3GS supports even 1080p, you just have to know which h.264 options to tweak and how to transfer the file. So the problem with 1080p decode is Apple, not the Samsung SoC. Of course that's nothing compared to the announced Tegra2 SKU, but that's no surprise since it's newer and aimed at tablets/smartbooks etc. Reply

Good article this one, why? Because I had no idea Nvidia were working on a good SoC technology, I simply ignored just about ANYTHING with the word Tegra on it think it was just some power sucking first gut shot thing created by nvidia as a side show.

You certainly hyped the A9 up, maybe a little too much. I agree with you and everything, but the repetition of the Cortex A9 support kind of made me a little sick. (please read on)

Personally, I'm happy if there are any improvements, but this still isn't where it should be. What I would like to know, though, is if you plan on doing any performance testing on phone devices in the future?

I believe smartphones/PDAs/pocket pcs - whatever you want to call them - are reaching that last step of maturity and have enough features and variance that they are worthy of testing.

I even started thinking, "should I pay to upgrade my phone?" I have 1 1/2 years left on my contract! Had this been one of my previous, non-touch devices, I would have gladly saved money and waited 'til even after my contract expired. But now, I started thinking that I'm using my phone a lot more than my desktop - the $/time-used would say it'd be a better buy.

Please start doing some in-depth analysis and, if you can, please push the phone manufacturers to include pico-projectors / good external speakers. I for one use my phone to watch my workout videos, it'd be nice just to set it down or let others view things at the same time.

on a smart phone, or a mp3 player . . . hmm am I missing something here ? Is this absolutely necessary ? Personally, I don't think so.

Also comparing ARM with an Atom processor is like comparing apples to oranges isn't it ? One is x86, the other is not.

Personally, I would be more interested in seeing how viable nVidias Tegra 2 would be used in other SoC embedded applications, or if nVidia will make derivatives that are more suitable for other than smartphone / mp3 player applications. Based just on the ARM technology, I would have to say these are going to be well suited for any low power application provided they perform well. Reply

1080P decode support on a thing like this is... Well, virtually useless, really.

When it's been shown that most people can't see the difference between blu-ray video and regular 'ol DVDs even on big-screen TVs, and the vast majority of people just don't see the point of HD video, then what the hell are we going to use this thing for? Watch BR rips on a 3" LCD screen, no I don't think so.

Plug it in to your big screen TV in the living room? Please. Don't you have a stationary player for that?

I've no idea who exactly this product is intended for.

And the dual A9 cores, well, I'm sure they're great - compared to whatever came before them anyway, but dual A9 cores, quad A9 cores or a quadrillion A9 cores doesn't really matter as long as they don't run any really useful software and THEY DON'T. As long as a portable isn't x86 compatible it'll never be more than a toy. Yeah sure, you can "do stuff" with an Iphone or whatever, but it's still just toy apps and it will stay that way until x86 becomes a realistic alternative in the mobile marketspace. Atom is a joke right now, it's slow AND power hungry. Maybe in another 5 years, who knows... Reply

it is nice if the device can decode the video in real time, even if it doesn't show it in its full resolution. then you don't need to re-encode stuff specially for the device, if size isn't a constraint - like if you are watching it from a network share.

but the main advantage of tegra 2 isn't just some stupid video decode. its all-round general purpose cpu performance, and 3d acceleration, at very low power usage. the modular design allows it to use as little power as the current usage pattern of the device requires so it will make fantastic handheld game console/phone/media player hybrids

and you whining that there aren't useful apps is just stupid. x86 isn't the world, you know - properly developed apps can be ported to anything, and once the platform is in people's hands, the apps will be too.
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Looking at that reference board it doesn't appear that it would be all that difficult to make a mini-ITX Atom alternative. You'd have to run Linux on it, but for an HTPC, NAS, or other low power single-purpose application spending $100+ on a fully featured Windows license is a little bit silly anyway.

If it is faster than Atom (and better at HTPC-centric video tasks) and can be had for much less than an i3 system (especially if i3 can't be passively cooled) I'd think NVIDIA would be jumping at the chance to show Intel up a bit. Even if the actual marketshare and economic gains were minimal, it seems to me that the "mindshare" gains could be huge. Reply

Personally, I do not see it happening. There is a reason why companies like SGI moved from RISC to x86 hardware. However, with that said ther is simply no reason why these SoCs could not be used in an external NAS / SAN system with the right software to back it up. x86 has the advantage of running desktop classed Windows, even if only for gaming, which is a larger market than most think.

Still, as a novice embedded designer, I see lots of potential in Tegra 2, but a lot of it would be unnecessary for my, and possibly others purposes. Smart phone, and MP3 players, sure, but not for a lot of other things. Perhaps if the graphics core were CUDA compliant and offered good number crunching performance . . . Reply

Personally, I do not see it happening. There is a reason why companies like SGI moved from RISC to x86 hardware. However, with that said ther is simply no reason why these SoCs could not be used in an external NAS / SAN system with the right software to back it up. x86 has the advantage of running desktop classed Windows, even if only for gaming, which is a larger market than most think.

Still, as a novice embedded designer, I see lots of potential in Tegra 2, but a lot of it would be unnecessary for my, and possibly others purposes. Smart phone, and MP3 players, sure, but not for a lot of other things. Perhaps if the graphics core were CUDA compliant and offered good number crunching performance . . . Reply

You won't see WoW and Sims running on a Tegra for a good long while, as those are DirectX based and thus stuck with Windows and x86. Q3 keeps getting shown off on mobile because it uses OpenGL and its code is open so people don't have to do messy licensing stuff to be able to port it to other architectures. Reply

It's a loser called DLeRium who thinks I don't know the diff btw x86 and PPC or ARM.

Perhaps he doesn't know I compile code from scratch all the time for Linux and most of that code easily compiles on multiple archs. That doesn't mean its automatic to go from x86 to ARM, but it isn't an insurmountable hurdle either. Reply

WoW is a ways off perhaps, but again, my original point was it is on OSX, which doesn't have DirectX. The previous poster was going on about x86 vs. ARM limitations.

UT2004 had DirectX and OpenGL versions.

For that matter, I believe the real question is, why would you want to game on a 3.7-5 inch screen? Even if you used video out, you would then end up hooking up some form of controller, and you'd be back to square one where you were with a computer.

But hey, surprise me. Boxee has the Tegra2 in it. Linux is a common denominator in phones and with ARM and OpenGL ES. Reply

" But rest assured that if you're buying a smartphone in 2010, it's not Snapdragon that you want but something based on Cortex A9"

LOL, now we are basing our smartphone purchases like we did 10 years ago with computers?

OK, let's wait for Tegra2 so we can watch an 8-12GB pirated 1920x800 HDx264 hi profile movie on an 800x480 screen with headphones or even worse, a 2 inch tinny speaker even though it has DTS audio. LOL. Reply

Though this article has me wondering if Nvidia has enough ppl to spread around, I honestly don't know. If they have to same manpower as ati (once again i have absolutely no clue) then wouldn't ati start gaining the upper hand in terms of desktop graphic solutions? Reply

Desktop graphics are not that important any more. Already more than 50% of the market is based on laptops. And this will only grow.

What Nvidia is doing is finding other markets it can make products for. Because building a company on a single product line is a problem if that market disappears.

Nvidia is hoping that products like the Tegra and Tesla will eventualy take over the profit they previously got from desktop graphics.

And that's not to late. Already CPU's are here (Westmere) that have on die GPU's. That will be intergrated GPU's in a year or so. That means that Intel can (and AMD when they get there) provide more than 90% of the needs for graphics on PCs or laptops. That leaves only a nice market for powerfull graphics.

So there will be a market for GPUs in the future. But the real money will be in the netbook, tablet and smartphone market. Reply

Unlikely because Apple owns PA Semi and would presumably have them design the chip in the tablet. Plus there is the rumor that Apple and Nvidia don't get along after the whole GF 8000-series GPU problems. And Apple would have to rely on someone else's product cycle.

So no. Its very unlikely. Which is unfortunate because the Tegra 2 would be a perfect fit for the Apple tablet - it has the audio and video toolkit, the dual ARM CPUs and a great GPU for OpenGL ES. Reply